“Rather than a ruleb00k–and we seriously have to switch metaphors here–the Bible is more a land we get to know by hiking through it and exploring its many paths and terrains. This land is both inviting and inspiring, but also unfamiliar, odd, and at points unsettling–even risky and precarious.”

While the many paths and terrains are both inviting and inspiring, it’s the unfamiliar, odd, unsettling, and even risky and precarious–that we have a problem with. Why? Because things are not as neat. Suddenly we’re not in control anymore. This scares us. We’re even left paranoid.

But as Enns notes, “We respect the Bible most when we let it be what it is and learn from it rather than combing out the tangles to make it presentable. Only then are we prepared to respect our own journey, our own uneven and sometimes unsettling path of learning who this God is and what ti means to connect with him.”